Intimacy  

1. I've just started a flickr account, which you can view here. For now there are a few pictures from my recent trip to Italy, but I expect I'll be putting up some different sorts of things soon. Thanks to Paul McAleer for suggesting I give it a try (and also for pointing out the value of the new customization features on GoogleNews, which I'd just dismissed as fluff).

2. My new copy of the Verse compilation has finally arrived, and so far it looks like a fantastic selection. The book contains a number of poems by folks I've mentioned or quoted here, including bloggers Shanna Compton and Joshua Corey.

3. I've been to this McDonald's on Pushkinskaya Ploshad' a couple times, and it certainly is busy... but what I remember most was the its free, public restroom facilities -- something all too rare in downtown Moscow.

4. And I mentioned this in a comment somewhere, but I wanted to make a public plea: I've been trying to convert my ailing Berkeley DB to MySQL as part of a redesign I'm working on (also possibly an upgrade to MT 3.15) but for some reason about half the comments are getting lost; I've explained the problem more fully here, but it doesn't seem to be a popular topic for discussion. Does anybody have experience with this, or thoughts?